


Country of Shadows

by ishafel



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-07
Updated: 2014-03-07
Packaged: 2018-01-14 21:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1279246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two things that never happened in Idris, and one that did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Country of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marcyjo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcyjo/gifts).



They bury Clary's mother and Luke in a green field in Idris, not in the Bone City, and they do not burn their bodies first. They were not Shadowhunters, not really, and they died destroying the Clave. It is raining, a warm, gentle rain that smells like hope. Jace holds Clary's arm, carefully, like he thinks she will wash away without an anchor. “I wish you could have known her,” she whispers to him, “I wish she could have known you. I wish--.”

Jace is so close to her she can feel him sigh. “I wish, too,” he says tightly, and she thinks that he almost sounds like he means it. She is crying, although with the rain on her face it doesn't feel like it. He isn't. He didn't cry for Valentine, either. He liked Luke; he barely knew Jocelyn.

To him, their deaths means something different, not the end of something but the beginning. They are the reason he can stand so close to Clary, the reason he can walk hand in hand with her away from the graves, the reason he can tilt her chin up and kiss her under the spreading trees that line the road.

There was no future for them until their family was dead, and Clary's brother's mouth tastes of tears when she kisses him and puts her arms around his neck. He is hers, all she has left, and she will not let him go. But that doesn't mean she doesn't wish that things were different.

“Where do we go?” she asks him. “What do we do now?”

Under his shirt, Jace's arms are scarred, but his face is perfect, beautiful. “Anywhere you like,” he says, and he's so sincere it hurts. “Anything you want.”

“I want to go home,” Clary says. “To New York. It's too pretty here.”

(ii)

Magnus being there is not so much a surprise as it is a relief. They are going to war, in all the ways that matter, and all Alec can think about is--. “I don't want to die a virgin,” he says, looking across the table at the sharp angles and gleaming spikes that make up Magnus. He doesn't look as out of place as Alec expected he would, in the Glass City. “Please.”

“Maybe,” Magnus says, “you should have asked Jace.”

Jace doesn't want Alec. “I'm asking you,” he says. “Magnus. It's you I want.”

When Magnus smiles, his whole face changes. He looks so young Alec could almost forget what he is. “In that case,” he says, “I'd be delighted to oblige.”

Before Alec has time to rethink things, Magnus is across the table and in his lap. If Alec hadn't meant it before, he'd mean it now. Jace is a dream, but Magnus is the real thing. If he is going to die, he wants to have been with someone, someone who actually likes him that way.

Magnus's mouth is greedy and relentless and awesome. His knee is between Alec's thighs and his body is warm and hard where it presses against Alec's. When the chair begins to tip backward, it's only Alec's Shadowhunter reflexes that save them from broken necks-- and somehow he still ends up on the floor, flat on his back with Magnus squirming on top of him, and both of them laughing.

Finally Magnus sighs. “I can't just-- deflower you, you know,” he says. “Much as I might like to. I'm not that kind of boy.”

Alec must look skeptical, because Magnus laughs. “I don't want to be that kind of boy,” he corrects himself. “Not with you. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right.”

“Can we at least fool around?” Alec asks, and he doesn't have to work to make it come out plaintive.

Magnus' cat's eyes shine. “Fooling around is mandatory,” he says. “I thought you'd never get it.” And then he kisses Alec again.

(iii)

“Did you really think,” Valentine says, “that I would treat any son of mine the way I treated you?”

Jace raises his chin, and looks him in the face. His wrists ache, but he doesn't let it show. If his father-- if Valentine taught him anything, it is that weakness is always a mistake. “How should I know? I wouldn't treat a troll's son the way you treated me.”

“No? Well, you always did have a soft spot for Downworlders. You're not disappointed, are you? To find out I'm not your father?”

“To find out I'm not the son of a psychopathic murder?” It isn't really funny, but Jace makes himself laugh anyway. “I think I can live with that.”

“Yes,” Valentine says. “At least what you want to do with my daughter will no longer be a mortal sin.” His smile is a perfect, ghastly copy of Clary's, the one she gets before she's going to do something unspeakable, and despite himself Jace shivers. “Did you think I would have let that continue, if you were really my son and not Michael's? There are only so many monsters I'm willing to create, Jonathan.”

“One,” Jace says. “One monster, Valentine-- you. You're your own perfect creation. Clary isn't like you, no matter how much you'd like her to be. Everything she is is because of her mother.”

“So you do love her,” Valentine says. “I can't blame you for that. It is a shame that you won't live long enough for anything to come of it, though. You had so much promise, my boy. You aren't my son, but I do hate to see such-- potential-- wasted.”

Now, finally, Jace can hear them coming. Isabel, Alec, Clary, Simon and Magnus. His friends, his family, and his future, and he doesn't let himself think about which is which. If he can only drag this out for a minute more, if he can only keep Valentine's attention from wavering, he might actually get to see them again.

You'd think he'd be out of sarcasm by now, but it turns out he isn't. “So I take it this isn't the best time to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage,” he says, and he gives Valentine his best approximation of a smile. “Dad? Can I call you that, now that you're going to be my father-in-law?”

And then the door comes crashing open, and what's behind it wipes away all the smug from Valentine's face.


End file.
